Take a look at lists of critics’ choices for top recordings of the year, then look at what music sold best. Guess what? They don’t match. “The only thing people who buy records and those who write about them agree on, then, is an album whose pastel wistfulness just begs for the spine-stiffening effect of a stint in the marines. This prompts the disheartening thought that the only listeners whose habits rock journalists have any influence over are in fact other rock journalists.”